Zava Damdin’s Beautifying Ornament for the Mind of the Faithful: A Praise-Biography of My Root Lama Vajradhara, He Who Possesses the Three Types of Kindness, the Great Mahāpaṇḍita Endowed with Excellent Discipline and Learning Named “Sanjaa”

2020 ◽  
pp. 99-120
Author(s):  
Matthew W. King
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Summer ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Cultural Interface ◽  
The Mind

This chapter presents a unique devotional biography from Khalkha by Zava Damdin Luvsandamdin (1867–1937) about his beloved guru Sanjaa (1837–1906). Completed in the late summer of 1914, some three years after the collapse of the Qing and the formation of a perilous Mongolian autonomous theocracy in 1911, Beautifying Ornament provides rare details about the life of an otherwise little-known Mongolian luminary from the late imperial period. Written in Tibetan and employing literary genres shared by that time across the Tibeto-Mongolian cultural interface, Beautifying Ornament sets narrative details proper to an “outer biography” (Tib. phyi rnam) into devotional verse (Tib. bstod) joined with a concluding “seven-limb prayer” liturgy directed to the departed Sanjaa for regular recitation by his disciples. Beautifying Ornament also illuminates the understudied globalisms of nineteenth-century Mongolian Buddhist life that sustained zones of contact and exchange between Mongol, Chinese, Tibetan, Nepalese, Japanese, Russian, and Indian Buddhist communities, scholastic institutions, and pilgrimage sites.

Viktor Vasnetsov’s New Icons

Experiment ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-144
Author(s):  
Wendy Salmond
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Paris Exposition ◽  
The Many ◽  
Modern Orthodox ◽  
Human Hands

Abstract This essay examines Russian artist Viktor Vasnetsov’s search for a new kind of prayer icon in the closing decades of the nineteenth century: a hybrid of icon and painting that would reconcile Russia’s historic contradictions and launch a renaissance of national culture and faith. Beginning with his icons for the Spas nerukotvornyi [Savior Not Made by Human Hands] Church at Abramtsevo in 1880-81, for two decades Vasnetsov was hailed as an innovator, the four icons he sent to the Paris “Exposition Universelle” of 1900 marking the culmination of his vision. After 1900, his religious painting polarized elite Russian society and was bitterly attacked in advanced art circles. Yet Vasnetsov’s new icons were increasingly linked with popular culture and the many copies made of them in the late Imperial period suggest that his hybrid image spoke to a generation seeking a resolution to the dilemma of how modern Orthodox worshippers should pray.

‘Our Greatest Riches’: Horses at the Intersection of Settler and Kazakh Society in the Late Imperial Period

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-228
Author(s):  
Sean McDaniel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seasonal Migration ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Migration Routes ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This article examines interactions between Slavic peasant migrants and mobile pastoralist Kazakhs within the setting of the Kazakh Steppe during the period of heaviest resettlement to the region beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing into the early twentieth century. It considers how the importance of horses to both settlers and Kazakhs alike dictated these interactions and how the sedentary world of the settlers disrupted the seasonal migration routes of Kazakh horse herders. Particularly with concern to the greatly expanded horse market, issues regarding land use, and increased instances of horse theft throughout the region, the Russian state’s encroachment into the steppe forever altered the social and economic makeup of the region.

Dreams as Life and Life as Dreams in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century xiaoshuo Narratives

T oung Pao ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 107 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 688-716
Author(s):  
Aude Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Dream Stories

Abstract In the depiction and analysis of various transtextual sources and rewritings, this article discusses narratives of Chinese late imperial xiaoshuo that dealt with dreams perceived as equally important if not more valuable than waking life itself. The discourse of these dream stories aimed at underlining the significance of the value granted to dreams, and consequently how this perspective on dreams could affect one’s stance towards life itself. With an emphasis on the eighteenth century, examples comprise narratives from lesser-known collections, such as Xieduo 諧鐸 by Shen Qifeng (1740?–?), but the author also highlights earlier texts—Daoist classics, chuanqi 傳奇 of the Tang, and chuanqi of the Ming—which served as sources for these late imperial tales. Although the theme of life-long dreams is found across the centuries and literary genres, this article points to its various treatments, that differed according to time periods and authors’ personal concerns. It highlights a shift in “life-long dream” stories of the late imperial period towards a concern for private matters, depicted in a detached and/or light-hearted tone.

All the Folk Art News Fit to Print

Experiment ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 244-257
Author(s):  
K. Andrea Rusnock
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Folk Art ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Cultural Milieu ◽  
Broad Audience ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Pattern Books

Abstract Neo-nationalism was concerned with a new aesthetic, not just in the fine arts but also in the crafts, particularly needlework. One way that this aesthetic was disseminated for needle art was through publications—magazines, pattern books, how-to-manuals, guides for schools, and the like. Publications on needlework were produced throughout the nineteenth century, and their output increased toward the end of the 1800s, with many portraying peasant imagery and patterns associated with this new style of Neo-nationalism. This article explores how needlework publications propagated Neo-nationalist art to a broad audience and the key role they played in shaping the cultural milieu of the Russian late Imperial period.

Chinese Business Practice in the Late Imperial Period

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeleine Zelin
Keyword(s):  
Rapid Development ◽  
Chinese Economy ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Market Expansion ◽  
Chinese Business ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Business In China ◽  
The Impact

The rapid development of the Chinese economy over the past several decades has stimulated new interest in the institutions, practices, and social formations that supported the development of business in China before the intensification of pressure from Western traders to conform to “modern” practices in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article aims to provide a foundation for understanding merchant practice as it developed during the important years of market expansion during the last Chinese dynasty and to dispel some of the enduring myths about the Chinese merchant, his relationship to family, community, and the state, and the ideological constraints on his activities. To that end I examine several aspects of late imperial merchant culture, beginning with the everyday practices that allowed business to flourish in the Qing, turning next to the large social formations through which long-distance merchants in particular identified and pursued their interests, and ending with some preliminary thoughts on the impact of the laissez-faire policies of the last dynasty and their implications for post-Imperial China.

scholarly journals Territory, enclosure, and state territorial mode of production in the Russian imperial periphery

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-25
Author(s):  
Vera Smirnova
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Educational Programs ◽  
The State ◽  
Rural Politics ◽  
Land Consolidation ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Imperial State ◽  
Mode Of Production

Abstract. After the imperial land consolidation acts of 1906, the Russian land commune became a center of territorial struggle where complex alliances of actors, strategies, and representations of territory enacted land enclosure beyond the exclusive control of the state. Using original documentation of Russian imperial land deals obtained in the federal and municipal archives, this study explores how the Russian imperial state and territories in the periphery were dialectically co-produced not only through institutional manipulations, educational programs, and resettlement plans but also through political and public discourses. This paper examines how coalitions of landed nobility and land surveyors, landless serfs, and peasant proprietors used enclosure as conduits for property violence, accumulation of capital, or, in contrast, as a means of territorial autonomy. Through this example, I bring a territorial dimension into Russian agrarian scholarship by positioning the rural politics of the late imperial period within the global context of capitalist land enclosure. At the same time, by focusing on the reading of territory from the Russian historical perspective, I introduce complexity into the modern territory discourse often found in Western political geographic interpretations.

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